Week of August 2, 1998 EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first
of two interviews with women who have left polygamist marriages.

BY ROS DAVIDSON

Last week a judge in Brigham City,
Utah, ordered John Daniel Kingston, a prominent member of a polygamist
group, to stand trial for the recent assault of his 16-year-old daughter.
Kingston, a vice president in a Salt Lake City accounting and auditing
firm, allegedly beat his daughter unconscious because she did not
want to be the 15th wife of his brother, her own uncle, in a marriage
arranged by Kingston, 43.

At the pretrial hearing, the teenager
-- who is not being identified and is now in foster care -- testified
that on May 24 her father took her to a remote family ranch near the
Idaho border, ordered her into a barn and made her take off her jacket,
then whipped her with his belt at least 28 times for rebelling against
the arranged marriage to David O. Kingston, a blood relative twice
her age.

The defendant, who pleaded not guilty
Monday, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. According to former
members of the Kingston group, as the fundamentalist sect of the Mormon
church is often known, the defendant himself has more than 20 wives.
Yet group leaders often deny that the church practices polygamy.

Not surprisingly, polygamy is a public
relations disaster for both Utah and the mainstream Mormon Church, the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which advocated the practice
until the late 1800s. Most Americans find the idea of plural marriage
abhorrent and primitive -- a woman who has one-half of a husband
or less? -- especially since fundamentalist Mormon churches usually preach
that wives must also be obedient to the husband. There are others, however,
who argue that when polygamous adults are consenting, as they usually
are, they should be left alone.

Further complicating the matter is
that Salt Lake City is desperately trying to update its image in time
for the Winter Olympics in 2002. The church, while growing steadily
-- it has between 7 million and 10 miillion members worldwide -- is highly
sensitive about its image. Because Mormonism prohibits smoking and drinking,
it is often characterized as conservative and strict. An estimated
70 percent of Utahans are Mormon. And even today many mainstream Mormons
are sympathetic to polygamy, believing that although it is outlawed
in modern society, it is an ideal that will always be practiced in the
highest levels of heaven, according to Utah historian Richard S. Van
Wagoner, author of "Mormon Polygamy" (Signature Books, 1989).

There are an estimated 30,000 polygamists
in Utah alone and perhaps the same number in other states. Most are
members of fundamentalist Mormon splinter groups, of which the Kingston
group is one of the most prominent. They often hide their "plural
marriage" from the outside world because it is illegal and stigmatized.

The area that is Utah was first settled
by Mormons in 1847, but their petitions for statehood were repeatedly
denied because of their polygamy. It was only after the church officially
repudiated the practice in 1890 that statehood was granted. And although
the church has excommunicated polygamists since 1904, it is still
a highly sensitive issue. The Mormons who first settled Utah had been
fleeing persecution for their beliefs and practices. And to this day,
Mormons are often wary of admitting that the church's early leaders
practiced polygamy, or "spiritual wifery," as it is also known. In fact,
Joseph Smith, the church founder and prophet, is often said to have wed
more than 50 women by the time of his death in 1844.

The idea of polygamy harks back to
the families of biblical figures such as Abraham and Jacob. Smith also
had a revelation on the matter, now known as Section 132 of the famous
decree "Doctrine and Covenants," a companion to the Book of Mormon that
is still part of Mormon scripture. That particular revelation was
also once described by Smith's successor, Brigham Young, who would become
the first governor of Utah, as "one of the best doctrines ever proclaimed."

So although polygamy is embarrassing
for modern-day Utahans, it is entwined with the history and religious
beliefs of most of the state's population. Plural marriages are rarely
prosecuted, even though Utah's Constitution specifically forbids them.
In 1991, when a polygamist in Utah filed for custody of six children
by his third wife after she died of breast cancer, the state Supreme
Court overturned a lower court decision and said the polygamist had the
right to adopt despite his plural marriages.

Last week, because of the outcry
over the upcoming Kingston trial, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a devout Mormon,
seemed to tread a fine political line. He indicated that Utah has not
cracked down on polygamy because to do so might curb religious freedom
in violation of the First Amendment. "It's clear to me in this state
and many others, they have chosen not to aggressively prosecute
it. I assume there is a legal reason for that. I think it goes well beyond
tradition," he said at his monthly news conference. "What needs to be
cracked down on, if there is to be such a crackdown, is any abuses of
peoples' civil and human rights." Even so, the upcoming trial of John
Daniel Kingston is attracting international attention because polygamy,
especially in the United States, is so inherently fascinating yet so
often completely hidden.

Tapestry of Polygamy, an unusual
support group for those leaving polygamy, consists of ex-wives and daughters
from polygamous households. Eight members of the group attended last
week's preliminary hearing in which John Daniel Kingston was ordered
to stand trial. Salon talked with co-founder Rowenna Erickson about what
members of her group say is an often abusive and poverty-stricken
lifestyle that, under the umbrella of religious belief, relegates women
to the role of subservient breeding machines and leaves children virtually
fatherless. Members of the group also held a news conference outside
the state Capitol in Salt Lake City yesterday to try to draw the governor's
attention to what they say are widespread civil and human rights abuses
of women and children in polygamy.

Rowenna Erickson, 58, was born into
the secretive Kingston church and lived for 34 years as the second of
two wives. She bore eight children in 13 years. For about a decade of
that, until she moved in with a daughter, she was so poor that she was
on and off food stamps and collected recyclable aluminum cans for money.
Then, in 1992, she was excommunicated for questioning what she
saw as the church's harsh treatment of women and children. A grandmother
of 10, she says she is all too familiar with those involved in the Kingston
case. Her former husband, Leon Kingston, is a first cousin of defendant
John Daniel Kingston and his brother David O. Kingston. And the
defendant's lawyer, Carl Kingston, is her former brother-in-law and,
according to the Salt Lake Tribune, believed to be the father of 20
children by two wives and another child from a wife who left him.

You've lived most of your life as
a polygamous wife, but your parents weren't polygamous. How did you
come to your decision to live a polygamous lifestyle?

My mother very much believed in it
because of her Mormon background, although my father, a Lutheran, didn't.
My mother idealized it. She felt that, since she hadn't done it, at least
one of her children should. Also, she thought she'd get religious
"credit" and that she'd be more likely to get what we called "celestial
glory" in the hereafter, which is what Mormons call heaven. That's because
our church believes that polygamy offers the only true path to the
"celestial kingdom," the highest level of heaven, and that no family
member will reach it unless a daughter is married to a leader of the
Kingston church. Marriage is considered eternal. So she conditioned me.
I was married in 1960, when I was 20 years old. My husband, Leon Kingston,
was the firstborn son of the church founder, Charles Elden Kingston.

Your husband already had one wife.
Did you know her?

Yes, she was my older sister.

Your older sister? Isn't that rather,
er, weird?

It does seem that way to other people.
But when you're in that sort of group it seems completely normal. Your
thinking, doing and being are all controlled by the church. If the church
said something, we jumped. My marriage wasn't recognized, though, by
the law of the land. Usually only the first of a polygamist's plural
marriages is legal.

SINS OF THE FATHERS

The marriage must have changed your
relationship with your sister profoundly.

Yes. She was eight and a half years
older than me. It was very, very hard for her. She didn't know how the
first wife typically feels, as no one had talked to her about it. She
became depressed. She was angry, hurt and jealous. We talked about it
at the time, but it was still hard. In polygamy, the first wife thinks
she's going to live "God's law" by having a "sister-wife," and
it turns out to be hard. So my sister blamed herself for not being able
to please God. They'd had three children and she got pregnant again just
three months after I married him.

Did your sister attend your wedding?

Oh yes. The first wife gives the
second wife to the husband; the second gives the third, and so on. It's
a religious ceremony. The ceremony is seen as validating the "celestial
marriage" for all eternity.

The term polygamy actually refers
to having more than one spouse. I don't suppose a woman ever took several
husbands?

Gosh no! (laughs)

Now you were in the marriage for
34 years and you had eight children in the space of 13 years. It sounds
like you must have almost always been pregnant.

Yes, I had six girls and two boys.
At one point I had three children in the space of three years and two
days. And my sister had six children.

So you didn't use birth control?

Oh no! Oh don't ever do that! You
don't want to stop any of those little spirits from coming here to earth.
You should have as many children as you possibly can. Some people probably
practice it, and I thought about the rhythm method. But as my doctor
said to me, "You know what they call people who use the rhythm method?
Parents."

How did you work out who spent the
night with the husband?

We all lived together for 11 years
in the same household, then I lived elsewhere and he commuted between
the two of us. We alternated nights and I was dutiful and never refused
him. It was very formal and sterile because my relationship, my marriage
to him, had to be secret because it was illegal. My kids -- like quite
a few other kids in our church -- didn't even know who their father
was. It wasn't even known at first within the Kingston group because
the group had been investigated by a grand jury in 1959 for polygamy,
and I think welfare fraud, so it was all relationships were secret.
It seems so stupid now. I'm ashamed and embarrassed. We were so obedient
to the organization, so loyal, and we kept all the secrets.

When your children asked about their
father, what did you tell them?

I told them he was in the Army. When
I think about it now it was such a terrible thing to say. It was cruel
because they kept expecting he would come home sometime and be their
father. They imagined all these wonderful things about him. They certainly
didn't like the man they thought was their uncle -- who in fact was their
real father. He reprimanded them so much and never showed any love
or affection. My oldest daughter still doesn't like him at all.

Your sister became depressed after
you married. Was it easier for you as the second, younger wife?

Well, I was very strong. I'd grown
up competing with four brothers. I was able to do it, but I was so very
lonely. I had no affection, no attention from this man. Intimacy was
never talked about. I remember I'd shower at night and I'd just cry
in the shower so no one could hear me then. It was horrible. I never
had male companionship. I never loved him. When I was pregnant he
wouldn't even ask when the baby was due. Never a word.

What about your family's financial
situation? Poverty is common in polygamist families because there are
so many children -- the wives are almost always pregnant or nursing.
And your church practiced consecration, whereby group members pooled
their income with the church, although you could withdraw some if you
could prove you needed to. You also paid a 10 percent tithe. In fact,
it's not uncommon for polygamous wives to need welfare and to qualify
for it as single mothers, which they usually are in legal terms.

We were so poor, I used to watch
other people's children for 32 cents an hour and collected aluminum
cans and pop bottles for extra money. I was on and off food stamps for
more than 10 years. I baby-sat my sister's children. The men usually
think that each wife should bear as many children as possible, regardless
of whether they can support them. And you're always pregnant. Our
church requires you to produce as many children as possible, because
little spirits are waiting to enter the world, via a male-female union,
so they can be sent on their eternal path upwards and one day become Gods
over their own worlds. I began to become aware of a real discrepancy between
the spirituality of polygamy -- that it's the ideal marriage --
and the poverty and abuse that polygamous families actually live with.
It's demented.

Isn't the Kingston group affluent
enough? It's been estimated that their business empire is worth up to
$150 million. In fact, in the last high-profile case involving the Kingstons,
in 1983, the then-leader, John Ortell Kingston, was estimated to have
assets of some $70 million. That came out because the state had
sued him for massive alleged welfare fraud. It was charged that he had
four wives and 29 children who had collected hundreds of thousands of
dollars in public assistance over a 10-year period. [Editor's note: The
case was settled out of court. Kingston repaid $250,000 and did not
have to take court-ordered paternity tests.]

Yes, the Kingstons have money, but
they use members as virtual slave labor. The money was for God, so it
was invested in businesses so the Kingdom of God could grow. We were
working for less than minimum wage. At one point the state stepped in,
so after that we had to pretend we got minimum wage even though we weren't.
We weren't supposed to complain or question the church authority
or God would disapprove. It's a big scam.

SINS OF THE FATHERS, 2

At what age do most girls in the
Kingston group marry and have children?

Most girls get married at 14, 16,
18, and have a baby every year. They cannot keep up financially, and
the children live in poverty, and the mothers are overwhelmed. There's
arguing amongst the women, and there's a lot of eating disorders because
they try to keep slim for the husband because they want to catch his
attention because they don't see him very much.

In the Kingston group, which has
about 1,500 members, the patriarchs had multiple wives. John Daniel
Kingston, the defendant, has more than 20, and you claim the leader of
the group, Paul Kingston, has 30-plus. There must be many young men left
single. What happens to them?

They are allowed to marry someone
outside of the group and she then becomes an automatic member. But if
a girl married on the outside, she was out. That was it. We actually
have a man who wants to become part of our group, Tapestry of Polygamy,
the brother of one of our members. He's a child of polygamy. He was
physically abused and he says polygamy warps a person's view of sexuality.

You also said you saw quite a lot
of abuse toward children from other wives, so-called sister-wives of
their mother, which makes sense to me. Sort of like the wicked stepmother.

My family wasn't really that way.
My sister and I were strong, and we really didn't need him, our husband,
although I suppose he was a good sperm donor because our children are
really outstanding. But there was a lot of abuse, and I heard about
it a lot in other polygamous groups. The most disciplined children were
considered the best children. Mothers would threaten their children
to make them obedient. They were under so much pressure themselves and
everyone wanted to look good. I couldn't stand it

When you were still in the church,
how did you view the outside world, what members of your group sometimes
call "Babylon"?

We more often called them "the outsiders,"
and we thought they'd all go to hell. Each polygamous group, including
ours, believes that it alone has the key, that their leader is the greatest
prophet on the planet. And we believed if a "celestial marriage"
is not sealed by the right people -- your own church leaders -- you
won't have that husband or wife on the other side, for eternity.

Why did you finally leave the group?
I know you were eventually excommunicated, but I'm wondering what led
up to that.

I was taking classes in hypnotherapy
and eventually realized what a lie I had been living. It's just like
[mega-selling author and recovery movement guru] John Bradshaw says,
you're as sick as your secrets. I went on this big spiritual quest and
realized I'd never loved my husband and that I was unhappy. I thought,
"OK God, all these women here are complaining about you and thinking
you're not very nice to them and how could a God love women and tell them
they had to live polygamy?" I was excommunicated in 1992 for writing a
letter to one of the church higher-ups telling him off for never preaching
love and for ruling by fear, and not many months later I left my marriage.
I had been dying inside. I became sick with asthma, I was depressed and
stressed out and I had so much tendinitis and bursitis in my hip, I was
bedridden. I was broke, although I'd been given a house by my former husband.
But I had no skills that would help me get a job.

Were your children supportive?

My children really encouraged me
to get out, otherwise I might not have been able to. I realized that
I couldn't still be a polygamist and help people get out of polygamy.
When I came out, I started going to the media, and whoever else I could
to point out illegal activity in the Kingston group -- the IRS, the FBI,
the U.S. attorney, anywhere I could find to tell them that the
church [allegedly] was cheating on its taxes, paying members less than
minimum wage and stealing members' property.

Are any of your children still members?
They were all adults when you were kicked out, so I presume custody
wasn't an issue.

My daughter Stacy is also a co-founder
of Tapestry of Polygamy. My children were way ahead of me. They thought
polygamy was stupid all along and were waiting for me to catch on. One
of my daughters did marry someone from the group. She's not a plural
wife but her husband is still a group member, and he treats her like
a plural wife -- he's somewhat abusive, and he can't get close or
emotional to her. She has to work hard and he doesn't contribute. He has
his own money but she's supposed to support the family. I don't intervene
though. She has to work that out herself.

Don't your husband and sister still
support you, though? How do they view your founding Tapestry of Polygamy?

I try to keep them out of it, as
they're embarrassed by it. My sister has a business and caters to a
lot of fundamentalists, so I try not to expose her. But now that the
focus is on the Kingstons, because of this case, Tapestry of Polygamy
is getting a lot of attention.

You know the Kingstons who are on
trial, right?

Oh yes. John Daniel, who's married
to his half-sister, he had his daughter marry his brother when she was
15 or 16. She was the 15th wife, but she couldn't do it, couldn't marry
him. She kept running away so John Daniel [allegedly] beat the daylights
out of her to make her do what he wanted her to do. You beat them up
and threaten them. That's what polygamy's about -- coercion, fear
and abuse. It's a question of power and control and a lot of sex. Polygamists
are not as spiritual as you're led to believe -- there's wife-swapping,
m nage trois, use of pornography. There's no end to it. John Bradshaw
came to Salt Lake City and said, "There's a high rate of incest
whenever there's a patriarchal order." And I thought, "Wow John, you're
pretty brave coming to Mormondom and telling them that." There's a lot
of genetic problems because of the incest.

Do you think polygamy should be outlawed?
If the adults are consenting and there's no abuse?

Some of the women in the group think
that polygamists should be prosecuted, others say if you prosecute them,
they will become victims and martyrs and go underground. Most of them
will never change anyway. I just want the abuses prosecuted. There
was a case in Colorado City, Ariz., about 15 years ago where a woman
tried to run away and she was returned to her husband by the police.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt recently commented
on polygamy and even admitted that his great-great-great-grandfather had
"many families," which sounded to me like a bit of a euphemism. He also
said that polygamy may be a constitutional right because of religious
freedom.

It was a whitewash. He brushed it
off. Polygamy is Utah's dirty little secret. They just don't want to
deal with it because Mormons and polygamists are kissing cousins. If
we have to, we'll go to Janet Reno to get the abuses prosecuted. I also
want people to know that polygamy is not because of God. It can't be,
because of the abuse and the deprivation of women and children.

Can polygamy work? For others, if
not for yourself?

No. I don't think it ever works.
You cannot live with polygamy, because that would mean ignoring the
pain, abuse, neglect and poverty. As a friend of mine, who's in pain
and agony because of polygamy, said, "It's one big eternal ----."

One big eternal ----?

Spiritually speaking, you're going
to be with him and have his children to populate other worlds, for eternity.
Well what does it involve? He's going to have sex forever and ever
and ever. And she's going to be pregnant forever and ever and ever.
So this woman said, "It's just one big eternal ----."

T H E D I C T A T O R
I N T H E H O U S E

In the second of two interviews with
polygamist wives, Vicky Prunty talks about how women become powerless
in "plural marriages." EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second
of two interviews with women who have left polygamist marriages. An
interview with Rowenna Erickson ran yesterday.

BY ROS DAVIDSON

It was in a McDonald's, with the
smell of hamburgers and fries, that Vicky Prunty was first introduced
to a pretty younger woman named Martha (not her real name), who would
become her husband's second wife in a polygamous marriage. Right there
in the fast-food restaurant, Greg (not his real name), a former Mormon
missionary, whisked a ring off Vicky's finger and placed it on
the hand of her new "sister-wife."

It was a highly symbolic moment in
Prunty's plural marriage -- an institution that has been so stigmatized
that it prompted fighting between Mormon settlers and U.S. Army troops
almost 150 years ago and then delayed Utah's statehood until the practice
was relinquished by the Mormon Church. Polygamy is still practiced by
a surprisingly large number of people in Utah and nearby states.
An estimated 30,000 or more adhere to what they see as a purer form of
Mormonism.

Polygamy exploded onto the front
pages of Utah newspapers this week. An alleged polygamist, John Daniel
Kingston, 43, pleaded not guilty on Monday in a court in Brigham City
to charges of beating his 16-year-old daughter unconscious because she
refused to be the 15th wife of her uncle, a man twice her own age. Both
men are prominent members of the fundamentalist Latter-day Church
of Christ, or Kingston group, one of the best-known yet most secretive
polygamous sects. Kingston faces a pretrial hearing on Aug. 24. A custody
hearing is also scheduled for that day. Members of Kingston's family
will reportedly try to regain custody of the young woman, now in foster
care.

A group of ex-wives and daughters
of polygamy, Tapestry of Polygamy, also made headlines on Monday in
the Salt Lake Tribune when it urged Gov. Mike Leavitt, a devout Mormon,
to take a firm stand against polygamy. The practice is, strictly speaking,
illegal, although the state has not prosecuted anyone solely for
polygamy since the 1950s. The ex-wives' group says that polygamy encourages
abuse of women and children and imprisons them in poverty without an
outside support network. Many polygamous wives have no skills for earning
wages. And since only the first of a polygamist's marriages is state-sanctioned,
later wives have no legal recourse if they leave; they may never see
child support or alimony.

Prunty is the director of Tapestry
and one of its founders. Now 35 and divorced, she is struggling to support
five children ages 4 to 13. A sixth, her oldest boy, has returned to
live with his father and Prunty's former "sister-wife." Prunty has found
that leaving a fundamentalist polygamist marriage can be difficult.
Upon leaving Greg, she briefly married a second polygamist husband,
unsure about leaving the institution altogether. At one point after
her divorce she was shocked and angry to learn that her children, while
visiting their father and her former sister-wife, had been told to pray
for Vicky's death because they claimed she was a sinner.

Prunty, a Californian, was not born
into polygamy. A Mormon since age 10, she met her first husband, a Mormon
missionary and an Englishman, at Brigham Young University when she
was a freshman and he was a senior. Not long afterwards, when they were
living as devout suburban "Mormon Yuppies" in Mesa, Ariz. -- she was
a mother of two and he was a salesman -- they decided polygamy would
be the best way of serving God faithfully. Salon interviewed Prunty by
phone at her Salt Lake City home as she was caring for several children.

As leader of Tapestry of Polygamy,
you told the media on Monday that Gov. Mike Leavitt's comment that polygamy
may be constitutionally protected amounts to tacit approval of the
abusive practice. Yet you chose to live in polygamy not once but twice.

I grew up with divorced parents.
And at the age of 7, we were distributed amongst other relatives. So
I was an orphan whose parents never died. Because of that childhood,
I married a man who was older than me. He was 25 and I was 18. I was always
needy of a father figure and wanted to be led by someone who was strong.
I was always attracted to that. Then once we had married, my husband
and I started investigating early teachings of the Mormon Church. We
really wanted to please God and not man, to live the gospel as it first
originated under Brigham Young and other early leaders. We believed that
polygamy was a way of living by the commandments and preparing ourselves
for Zion, when Christ would come back.

You read a great deal about Mormonism.
How exactly was polygamy justified?

The teachings were vague. It's in
Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132 -- kind of a companion to the Book
of Mormon -- but it's vague. It doesn't tell you the reason except to
multiply, to build kingdoms and principalities and the hereafter in
heaven and here on earth and to bring about the birth of "children's
spirits."

How do you see it now?

Now I think that polygamy is designed
to oppress women and to keep them in bondage to men. Choosing polygamy
because of religion, because you fear that if you don't chose it you'll
be damned for eternity, is very different from choosing polygamy because
you really want to take in a lonely widow -- to be kind to family, friends
and neighbors. I mean, in this day and age do we really need to
have polygamy? It's not as if there aren't enough men to go around! There
are also so many orphan children and other unfortunate children in
this world, I don't know if the answer is to continue having as many
children as possible. That's why I say to polygamous men: "Do a good
deed, don't just spread your seed."

Presumably at the time you couldn't
stay in the Mormon Church as polygamists. You'd be excommunicated.

Yes, so we returned to Utah and joined
a small fundamentalist group and -- quite literally -- lived in a rock
in Moab, a cave blasted into the side of a sandstone rock in the desert.
It had a concrete floor and a wood stove. We lived there collectively
with a polygamist, his three wives and children. Now it's a bed and
breakfast.

When was it that your husband took
a second wife?

We'd been married about seven years
and had three children when Greg met her. He had been visiting the Singer/Swapp
clan while traveling to and from Salt Lake City to Moab.

The clan was the fundamentalist group
in Heber Valley that bombed a Mormon chapel in January 1988 to get back
at the "Mormon-run state" for shooting dead their patriarch, John Singer,
a few years earlier. And within months of the bombing, a stand-off
with the FBI and police in Marion, Utah, left one police officer dead.

Yes, when the leaders of the clan
were jailed, Greg had to spend time with Singer's widow and her family.
While living there, he met the young redheaded daughter of the clan's
lawyer, Martha. She was about 19 or 20. He married her and came back
and I had to give her to him in a ceremony, which is typical. I put her
hand in his. I felt uncomfortable with it, but I wasn't convinced
that it was wrong.

I believed that we would be living
polygamously at some other time, perhaps in the next world. I thought
that trying to practice polygamy on this imperfect earth was like eating
your favorite Marie Callender pie in a dump. I mean, I thought this
world is so monogamous. Cars are not built for polygamous marriages.
You have only two front seats, not three for a man and two wives.
It's very difficult to fit in if you have more than one wife. When my
husband went to business dinner parties, we accompanied him alternately.
As a wife, I was also bothered by the imperfections of man. Polygamy meant
I had to follow my husband as he was the patriarch. That was what we
believed. It was our law. You're following an imperfect human. And
who wants to follow an imperfect human?

So what happened? I know as a family
you moved several times, and at least twice lived in Salt Lake City.

Well at first I went along with the
marriage. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. We lived in
the same home. I was in the marriage for a few years. I lived upstairs
and she lived downstairs and we pretty much shared the middle floor.
She had a nice big wedding and reception. I had to hide in the background
-- I was told to act like a friend of the family -- because he wanted
the image of marrying monogamously for his career. I'd just had a baby
a few days earlier. It was so difficult. It was not natural, for me
at least. Yet the whole time I was trying to convince myself that polygamy
was right and I was wrong because of the religion behind it.

How was it decided who spent the
night with whom?

We just had an arrangement, every
other night.

What about her -- did you like her?

I liked her, but I didn't understand
why he had chosen her. I had always thought that plural marriage would
be more charitable, something you do to help women without husbands,
the single women. But I knew that in his heart he would not have married
somebody who was just a service project. He chose this woman because
of her body proportions.

Didn't that make you jealous?

He had told me he wanted someone
who was shapely. He chose her partly for her body. That hurt me, and
I realized that he was more in it for himself than anything else. I mean
those brownie points in heaven were his. It wasn't like the law of
Sarah in the Bible. It was the law of Abraham. It was all male-oriented.
I felt as if I was the martyr of the whole thing. It was just a charade.
I realized -- and it took me a while -- that the dynamics and the institution
did not emancipate a woman. I only realized this when all of a sudden
our partnership turned into a dictatorship. In monogamy, our relationship
wasn't perfect but it was pretty balanced in terms of power. But
when he became the husband of two wives, the only way to keep order
in the home was to become more powerful. Otherwise he'd have two wives
going different ways. He had to put his foot down to get consensus.

How did he demonstrate this power?

He started saying things like, "You're
mine to dispose of unless I find you worthy." Or, "I'm the tree with
the shade, and if you don't like my shade, you can leave." He'd also
give my nights with him to my "sister-wife" if he was angry with me.
The problem was, he didn't tell me how I could leave. What was I supposed
to do without money and all these kids? I also have a copy of a scripture
he wrote in which he said, "If the wife is subject to her husband's law,
then she truly has no right to refuse his taking other wives beside
her in her lifetime. She is, after all, under his dominion." Martha was
also obviously his favorite, so it wasn't at all easy. At various points,
Greg would even try and convince me that I was possessed by demons, because
I was rebellious and unhappy. Some of the other men in our group
would try and exorcise me.

THE DICTATOR IN THE HOUSE,2

What was it like for the children?

You have to realize that one of the
really deceptive things about polygamy is the love that children have
for their siblings, their half-siblings. But it mixes things up in a
way. It's great to have a large family, to think of humankind as all
being brothers and sisters and taking care of each other. But when you
don't have your individual families, when you don't understand the
responsibilities and associations of family members, it can get very
confusing. When I was picking my kids up this weekend from visitation,
my daughter had this present and it was signed from her "Mom and Dad."
All the kids, my kids, have to call their stepmother "Mom." That's
one of the rules of their family. To them, in the eternity, that's
who they've been taught will be their mother because I'm a sinner and
I have been cut off from the family for leaving. So it mixes them up.
Of course, none of these things you could ever prove in a court of law
because emotional and mental abuse is much harder to prove than physical
abuse. Their word against mine. That's the sort of indoctrination we
go up against.

What do the children think about
calling Martha "Mom"?

Well, I just saw that gift card and
we haven't discussed it yet. I know that if I call the children up when
they're there, they say "Mom said this, Mom said that." I say, "Well I'm
your mother." But I can't force them not to say it when they're there.
I'm their mother. I have made a huge sacrifice on their behalf and there's
no way she will ever love those children like I do. I really struggled
to be a good mother and the one thing that has really spurred me on,
especially to do what I'm doing today, advocating for other mothers, is
that I think that motherhood is the greatest job in the whole wide
world. I have a hard time when people give lip service to that and to
families. It's been very hard for me as a single mother to leave my children
to go to work when I feel they need me at home.

When did you leave your marriage?

I left 11 years after we married
when I realized that I'd put myself in a position to be used for his
glory, his ego. I'd gotten pretty used to not having an intimate relationship
with anyone.

You didn't want to have more of a
relationship with him?

I didn't know what a good relationship
was. Even in monogamy, our relationship wasn't that great. I'm sure
that's why he took a second wife. It was a relief not having him around
sometimes because you could do your own thing. I disciplined and fed
the children and did all the same things for him. I had to baby him,
and when he wasn't around I didn't have to do it. It wasn't a real
partnership when we were monogamous either. But I continued to think
that plural marriage was a good thing, it was just the guy I married is
a power freak.

So I went into another plural marriage
as a third wife. The husband, Carl, knew my first husband and his family
seemed like they were very happy in polygamy. The first wife, Judy,
had three children and the second wife, Maggie, was pregnant. I told
them I didn't want to be full-fledged wife but I wanted to be part of
a family as I want my children to have a father -- at least a part-time
one.

But then Carl revealed to us that
he never believed in polygamy, that he had just taken wives because
he wanted to have sex with more than one woman. He was honest with us.
Of course it shocked me and I had to run into the bathroom crying and
wondering what was going on. I felt sick because I had actually started
to fall in love with this man. Another thing that I noticed was the first
wife was going through the same things I had gone through when my
husband took a second wife -- jealousy, insecurity. And her husband was
sometimes strutting around like this rooster. She became almost became
numb. I could see her almost becoming a zombie. This woman was a really
strong woman. Then I became pregnant with his child.

Where were you living?

Salt Lake City.

Did the neighbors say anything about
your plural marriage?

I think that here in Utah we're pretty
used to polygamous families. I eventually moved out and moved back to
California for a couple of years. I thought I could get some support
from my family. I found out that my first husband was praying for my
death with my children, because he thought i was such a sinner. He and
his wife don't pray for my death now. But when he did it was almost
like a predator, a lion, going for the weakest one. I was very weak.

Why did you return to Utah?

I wanted to do something about polygamy.
I went to court because I had a hard time accepting that my husband
had visitation rights. The children have always been with me. Raising
them has not been a partnership. He was just the breadwinner. He was
going from house to house, between his two wives, but my children were
always with me. Why all of a sudden when I get a divorce should it
be any different? At least with monogamy, the husband is with his children
in one home.

You were initially in a shelter when
you left because you were so poor.

Yes. That was when I left him and
moved to California. When I came back to Utah, I wanted to go to school
to get my degree. I was getting some child support but it wasn't enough.
I tried living near my second husband. I rented from him. But it didn't
work. After about 18 months of living there, I left and had to go to
a shelter. And I realized that my dream has really been to help women
to get out of abusive situations and to get the resources and their
needs taken care of.

Do you think polygamy can ever work?

If a woman wants to be treated as
an equal and she wants a partnership in rearing her children, monogamy
is probably the way. If she wants to have a husband who has sex with
other woman and she wants to be submissive and have lots of children,
then she perhaps should go into plural marriage. It's a lot like being
a single mother except you still have a leader. But you're usually
lonely and don't have much money. About 30 percent of polygamous wives
in some communities get welfare. As for me, I definitely want something
better for me and my children.

Does polygamy attract certain women?

Oh yes. They have to be quite sheltered.
Young is good too. Innocent, not very educated. They prey upon women
who aren't strong, with low self-esteem. Often women are just brought
up as plural wives. I didn't grow up in it so it was easier to get out.
We're finding thousands of children are being brought up in it and
their lives are ruined. And it's becoming more prevalent as there are
so many different lifestyles. This is just one of them, though it's based
on power and control so it's not just another alternative lifestyle.
Religion is also man-made and this type of marriage is one of those things
that men use to overpower women. Any organization that is based on a male
book is not my thing.

Why are you speaking out against
polygamy now? Because of this upcoming case involving John Daniel Kingston?

I think that all of us [at Tapestry
of Polygamy] got sick of the abuse -- it's been so hush-hush. It's like
Utah's dirty little secret. And because we've been involved in polygamy,
we wanted to do something about it after we got out. We wanted to help
others who are still involved and are trying to get out. We wanted
to say to this young girl, "Hey, we're here for you."